I hope you’ve been enjoying the beautiful autumn weather (well, here in the UK, at least) – it certainly has helped take the edge off these sudden darker evenings. On that note here’s a snap I took a couple of days ago on my way out of the gym 🙂

Autumn sunshine, London – not far from Richmond Park

Back to business, and it’s time for a long overdue update. I hope you’ll find what follows of interest in your self-publishing journey.

SCBWI – UK Conference Sat-Sun 19-20th November – I’ll be there

First, just to say that I’m speaking on a panel about the nuts and bold of self-publishing children’s books at the Society of Book Writers and Illustrators’ Conference in Winchester in a couple of weeks’ time. My session is at 10.30 on the Sunday morning and there’s a fantastic variety of talks and workshops around children’s writing and publishing over the two days (many of which I shall attend.) If you happen to be booked in, please do come and say hi! And if you like the look of the programme you can still book as far as I can see – use the link above.

Trying Out A Fun Online Book Widget/Biblet – What do you think?

Nielsen UK asked if I’d like to try out their Book2Look widget (caled a ‘Biblet’), which combines flip-page book extracts with the ability to embed audio and video clips. Knowing how kids love interactivity – and wondering if this could help with online book marketing – I jumped at the chance. I must say it doesn’t disappoint! If you click on either image below the biblet will open up on your screen or mobile device.

Click each widget to open up.

Do try them out and share with friends and family using the share buttons inside. For those of you with children I’m particularly interested to know what you and they think. This is really an early heads-up. Look out for a more detailed post soon about how I’ve used these, along with another quick survey asking your thoughts. Biblets can of course be used for YA and adult books too so do take a look if writing in those genres.

Why print matters if self-publishing children’s books

After attending the Bookseller Children’s Conference, I recently wrote a piece for the Alliance of Independence Authors’ Advice Centre on the latest UK stats for sales of children’s books. The stats confirm extremely strong sales of children’s print books in 2016, with this format continuing to be the preferred for both reading and buying – by a mile! In short, if you’re thinking about self-publishing children’s books for this age range you need to focus on print. The stats for children’s magazines also make very interesting reading – and offer food for marketing thought.

Head over to ALLi to read the full post, and my thoughts on the implications for indie authors. There are two more posts to follow in the coming weeks – one on online marketing of children’s books and another with a Mumsnet survey overview. I’ll send a reminder about these when they go up.

School visits

As we’ve seen above, print is the way forward if you want to sell children’s books for under 12s in any numbers. This in turn means that you need be ready to get out and meet young readers at schools and other events. Contacting schools can be exhausting as everyone is so busy, but the rewards when you get to meet the children and hear how much they’ve enjoyed your books are wonderful – I love visiting schools!

On that note, if you’re in the UK and think your child’s school would like a visit please refer them to my school visits page over on my author website. London is easiest but I do travel farther afield where budgets allow. World Book Day Week is already almost full but I have good availability at other times.

Top tip:Canva is a great place to make flyers to promote your visits and other events – and it’s free. Below I’ve included a flyer I made yesterday for a visit next week.

Made using Canva

My New Children’s Books YouTube Channel

I’m excited to announce that I’ve recently set up a new YouTube channel Karen Inglis Children’s Author(This is separate from my channel on self-publishing children’s books, though it remains to be see whether that will cause confusion!). It’s early days but please do take a look and point your children in my direction if they use YouTube Kids – the videos don’t contain advertising or links to ‘buy’ pages so should be searchable on YouTube Kids under my name as well as being on the main YouTube channel. Oh, and please do give any videos you watch a thumbs-up if you enjoy – every little helps, as we know :-). I will blog separately about the practicalities of setting up a YouTube channel in due course.

Karen Inglis Children’s Author – search on YouTube or YouTube Kids

Quick 5-Question YouTube Survey if you have children under 13

Finally, the link below goes to five-question survey about your children’s use of YouTube and one other social media site. It should take less than a minute to complete so I hope you’ll take the time. All data is anonymous and I’ll be blogging about the outcome and insights for making children’s books marketing videos in due course, so this is for all of our benefit. Many thanks!

6 Responses to Autumn update: focus on children’s book marketing

This is a really informative article. Thanks for sharing it Karen. I wasn’t sure about going down the e-book route at the moment. My instincts said not to bother at this stage and I may have been right.

Hi Nicola – many thanks for the feedback and, yes, I’d focus on print for now, but no harm converting for eBook later on as they can be used for promotional offers etc and for brand awareness. But the real sales numbers up to age 12 are in print. (BTW it would be great if you could complete the YouTube survey if you get a moment at some point…which devices children watch YouTube on is of particular interest.) Hope you’re well and realise I owe an extract for your blog! K